Loose change for October 28, 2009

Korea-related stuff:

• Japanese high school students in Aichi Prefecture donate 100,000 yen to help restore Namdaemun Gate, which was largely destroyed by arson in February 2008
• Survey of 232 women going to an online dating service is used to extrapolate to the entire 24.5 million women in South Korea the idea that 90% of all women in South Korea and not just those desperately seeking a husband would like to have plastic surgery
• South Koreans don't give a rat's ass about predictions that doom will befall the Earth in 2012
• Korea's budget airlines are expanding overseas routes, but not yet to Hawaii, which could really use some 저렴한 fares to Korea
• South Korea and New Zealand seek progress on FTA
• Diesel vehicles top the list of most fuel efficient vehicles in Korea: the Diesel-powered Kia Pride and Hyundai Verna clock in at 22 km/l (52 miles/gallon)
• Owners of uninsured or unregistered vehicles face not just fines, but possible criminal charges as well
• Reuters focuses on the corporate connection with Korean baseball
• The Chosun Ilbo talks about the problems of Korea being in a Microsoft monoculture
• German woman made famous on Korean television program where she talked positively about Korea can't understand why some Koreans are upset that she wrote a book doing little more than dissing the country (join the club)
• Yonhap movie review of "Kiss Me, Kill Me," in which Kang Hyejung doesn't look so freakishly halmŏni-like after her ill-advised surgical makeover

Not-so-Korea-related:

• The last time the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies met in the World Series, the Korean War was in its first year; this time, actual South Koreans are playing in it
• Foreign students pump $160 million per year into the Hawaii economy; top contributing nations are Japan, South Korea, Switzerland (?!), Taiwan, and China
• Orange County elementary school accidentally prints shemale-oriented adult chat line number on school fundraiser shirts
• Human Rights Watch report on abuses in Thailand in relation to that country's war on drugs